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I am perfectly fine with adapting my language to "effective vs. ineffective," but I think the point that B. Vallabha & I were trying to make doesn't really revolve around the terminology.  Honestly, I think that if we are to look at teachers as a random distribution of human performance and be contented that some, as you say, are near the bottom of the effectiveness distribution, than we have a far greater problem.  I think it goes against the graining of "life as a learning process" to simply accept that some teachers are ineffective.  Teachers, to be effective, have to accept that learning doesn't just revolve around concrete lesson plans.

However, if you arguing that teachers will seem ineffective to some and effective to others, I would agree.   If we are trying to please the entire continuum of students in the education system, we are sorely mislead.  Basically, we just want to foster the idea of 'developmental learning,' whereas the student sees school as a stepping stone into learning more as he enters life without 'proper' education.  I think that, if a teacher does foster this initiative and breeds discussion (as we have argued is quite beneficial, seeing as our society operates on a more or less emergent social system), than he or she is ultimately as effective as can be.

We have to rely on goals that are set by our own understanding of developmental learning rather than being judged by others.  If, as Bob says, we have a classroom of children we cannot 'deal' with, we therefore must also adapt--just as emergent education suggests--and try new methods.  I hardly think that any one teacher can fail, if they understand the concept of always learning.